Sir Mix-A-Lot

Description

"Baby Got Back" hip hop innovatorFriday, Nov 15 - open dance floor

10:30pm $18 adv, $22 door

Sir Mix-A-Lot parlayed a gonzo tribute to women with large buttocks into hip-hop immortality. But even before he struck crossover gold, Sir Mix-A-Lot was one of rap’s great D.I.Y. success stories. Coming from a city — Seattle — with barely any hip-hop scene to speak of, Mix-A-Lot co-founded his own record label, promoted his music himself, produced all his own tracks, and essentially pulled himself up by the proverbial American bootstraps. Even before “Baby Got Back,” Mix-A-Lot was a platinum-selling album artist with a strong following in the hip-hop community, known for bouncy, danceable, bass-heavy tracks indebted to old-school electro. However, it took signing with Rick Rubin’s Def American label — coupled with an exaggerated, parodic pimp image — to carry him into the mainstream. Perceived as a one-hit novelty, he found it difficult to follow his breakout success, but kept on recording, and even toured as part of a rap-rock supergroup called Subset, a collaboration with the Presidents of the United States of America.

Solo again, Sir Mix-A-Lot signed with the small Artist Direct label and released his sixth album, Daddy’s Home, in 2003; the lead single, “Big Johnson,” was a satire of men who exaggerated their manhood, written at the behest of female fans who wanted equal treatment in Mix-A-Lot’s sex rhymes.